Redeemed

“Fire! Kill them!” shouted the chief of police.

Marx tried to stop him. Tried to remind him that there were i

At first Marx didn’t want to look up. He didn’t want to see the gunfire-ravaged Mayo and start dealing with the aftermath of the chief’s rash command. But Marx wasn’t the kind of man who avoided the hard things in life; he’d made a career out of dealing with them. Resolutely, he looked up.

The snakes-turned-curtain had expanded so that it looked like the building had grown a crimson and black skin, a skin so tough that not even the Glocks the uniforms carried had penetrated it.

They all watched the darkness continue to spread down the building to street level and pool there with a rustling sound that reminded Marx of the time he’d visited New York City and stayed at the Plaza—and made the mistake of going out for a smoke at 3:00 A.M. Rats. He’d walked to a row of neatly trimmed hedges in front of the Plaza’s grand entrance and heard a rustling. He’d looked down, shocked to see dozens of fat rats scurrying among the hedges. That’s what the shroud of darkness Neferet had created sounded like as it settled where the building met the ground and washed, restlessly, against the 1920s stone.

“Fire on the doors. Break through that damn thing and get ready to rush inside!” the chief shouted.

“No!” Marx cried as the uniforms around them jumped to obey their chief.

Determined to survive to fight another day, Marx ducked down behind a squad car.

It was over in seconds. The officers ran toward the double doors, firing at the glass that now was covered in slick gore-stained black. His heart broke when the screams began. Marx was already calling into his radio, “Multiple officers down! We need more buses at the Mayo! And backup! More backup! Get every uniform in Tulsa here now!”

When the chief staggered back and fell heavily to the pavement, a friendly fire bullet causing a bloom of red in the middle of his forehead, eyes rolled back, milky, sightless, and undoubtedly dead, Marx did the only thing he knew to do—he took charge.

“Cease fire and fall back! Fall back!” he shouted, and the men responded with obvious relief.

A young uniformed cop crouched down next to him, breathing heavily, his hands trembling. Marx thought the kid couldn’t be much older than twenty-one.

“Mother of God, that black stuff didn’t even chip! It ricocheted the bullets back at us, like it was actually aiming. What the hell is that?” he said, voice shaking as hard as his hands.

“Magick,” Marx said. “Dark, evil magick.”

“How the hell do we fight it?”

Marx met the young man’s eyes. “We don’t. We need help. Thankfully, I know where to get it.”

Zoey

“I wish I knew what the hell was going on!” Stark paced back and forth in front of her cell.

“Go see if Grandma’s still in the waiting room. She can find out what’s happening. She brought cookies. No one can resist Grandma’s cookies,” I said.

“Good idea. I’ll be back in a sec.”

Stark shot down the hall, leaving me to take up his pacing for him.

Neferet. If something crazy was happening at the Mayo, Neferet had to be responsible. I wanted to grab the bars of my cell and shake them like a hysterical person and scream, Let me out let me out let me out! If Neferet was out there causing goddess only knew what, I should be out there, too, trying to figure out how to stop her.

And I would be if I hadn’t lost my mind and killed two men.

Stark jogged back to me and wrapped his hands over mine, which really had been holding onto the bars of my cell like I could bend the stupid things.

“They must have kicked your grandma out with Thanatos and the rest of them. No one’s here except a front desk cop. The fucking place is deserted! If I had a key I could break you outta here with no problem.” His brows raised and, with his hands still pressed over mine, he gave a little shake to the metal bars (which did not budge). Then he smiled his cute cocky grin. “But since I don’t have a key, do you happen to know someone who could, say, summon a few elements to, I du

“Stark, I’m in here for a reason. I did something really, really bad. Breaking out is not going to help anything.”

“It might help if Neferet is on the rampage, eating the unsuspecting citizens of Tulsa. Actually, they might forget about your accident at the park and thank you if you help bring down Ms. Batshit Crazy.”

I smiled sadly. “They might forget about it, but I wouldn’t. And Stark, I can’t stop Neferet.”

“You have before.”

“Not for good, and not without help.”

“Well…” He threw his arms wide. “You have help!”

I snorted. “Not enough. If we were enough, we would have been able to make sure Neferet couldn’t come back from when we kicked her butt last time.” Then my shoulders slumped and I shrugged. “It’s probably not her at all. It could be bank robbers.”

“At the Mayo? Uh, Z, that’s a hotel, not a bank.”

“Well, it could be—”

The door to our hallway opened, banging metallically against the wall, and Detective Marx hurried toward us. He looked crappy. I mean, really crappy. His suit was smudged with dirt and one knee of his pants was torn. I could smell blood, which I totally made myself ignore. Actually, it wasn’t that hard to do because the look on his face was so disturbing.

He looked scared.

“What happened at Woodward Park?” he demanded as he came up beside Stark.

“I already told you.”

“Tell him again,” Stark said.

“Why, what’s going on?”

“Answer my question first.”

“Okay, like I said before, the two men made me mad and I threw my anger at them.”

“What did they do that made you so mad?” he asked.

“Not enough to make killing them okay,” I said.

“Just answer my question!” Marx snapped.

Surprised at his tone, I heard myself saying, “They were hanging out in the park looking for girls to scare into giving them money. They didn’t see my tattoos until after they’d already started messing with me. Then when they realized I wasn’t just some helpless little teenager, they changed their minds about trying to scare me. They basically said they were just go

“Tell him the rest. Tell him why you gave Aphrodite the Seer Stone when you gave yourself up to him,” Stark insisted.

“I didn’t realize it then, but now I can see that the Seer Stone, a kind of talisman I’d been given on the Isle of Skye, had been doing something to my emotions—amplifying them, or causing them, or maybe just feeding off my stress. It gets hot when it works, and at the park it was super hot. That had to have been how I lifted those guys off their feet and smacked them against the wall by the grotto.”

“You can’t do that, say, right now, can you?” Marx asked, watching me closely.

“I don’t think so. At least, not by myself, no. I’d have to call one or all of the elements, and they’re most powerful if my circle is with me and all five of us are cha

Marx nodded thoughtfully. “Did you know that the two men were dead when you left the park?”

“No. I mean, I knew I’d smacked them against the wall, but it was like a crazy explosion from me. It, well, it surprised me,” I said. Absently, I rubbed the palm of my right hand on my jeans and then glanced down at it. In the center of the latticework tattoos a perfect circle had been branded there. I held my palm out so the detective could see it. “That mark in the center—the circle—that’s from the Seer Stone. It happened when I threw my anger at those men. It was like power came from it through me. When I realized what I’d done, I walked over to look at them.” I swallowed hard, remembering.